The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

Fortunately, this item is to be filed under the category of incompetence, and not under malice. Unfortunately, in the end, the result is the same either way. Under a new law, which just went into effect, boxes upon boxes full of classic children’s books have been and are being thrown in the dumpster, literally, because that’s now federal law. When you elect idiots to Congress— But I repeat myself.

Since 1985, it’s been illegal to manufacture children’s books using lead paint. Before then, it was common to use lead in some pigments used to color illustrations. But now, in Congress’s immutable wisdom, the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) makes it illegal to resell old children’s books from that time period.

Why is this stupid? Because even these old books pose no observable risk to children. Walter Olson explains on the City Journal website:

While lead poisoning from other sources, such as paint in old houses, remains a serious public health problem in some communities, no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations—not surprisingly, since unlike poorly maintained wall paint, book pigments do not tend to flake off in large lead-laden chips for toddlers to put into their mouths.

(Click here to read the whole article.)

As a result of the new law, thrift stores are dumping—literally dumping—masses of classic children’s books, because they don’t want to get hit with the massive fines and even prison that the law prescribes, even if no child is ever harmed.

In an oft-quoted account, originally posted to Etsy, February 10 2009, 12:30 pm EST:

I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of childrens books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just cant believe it! Every book they had on the shelves peior to 1985 was destroyed! I managed to grab a 1967 edition of “The Outsiders” from the top of the box, but so many! It makes me sad.

Gary North rails: “The bureaucrats are now enforcing the letter of the 2008 law. Congressmen will feign ignorance. ’Gee, how were we to know?’ Too late. The books are in landfill.”

Fortunately, this law is likely to work just as well as other prohibitionary laws on the books, that is to say, hardly at all.

People are a tenacious lot. They’ll do what they think is right, regardless of how harsh the penalties that may be heaped on their heads. There will always be a Guy Montag trying to preserve the culture, despite the terrorism of the warlords in Washington.

The comments on the CPSIA at Overlawyered.com are telling. Valerie Jacobsen writes:

As an ethical matter, I really can’t discard our cultural heritage just because the CPSC has decreed that books published through *1984* may or may not still form a legal part of the canon of children’s literature for our culture.

I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I’d love to run a black market in quality children’s books–but at the same time it’s not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before. It’s a scary thing to know that what you are doing is a positive good for the community–and yet possibly, strangely illegal.

Carol Baicker-McKee agrees:

I kept thinking this law would go away, but now I’m worried that an important part of our heritage is genuinely threatened. Many, many children’s books printed before 1985 are now out of print and do not exist still in a form that would make them easy to republish…

If nothing happens to change this law soon, I promise I will spend whatever money and devote whatever space I can to buying up these older books. I’ll be happy to label myself a collector (and I’m subversive enough to leave the books lying around where kids might “accidentally” read them).

Always watching!
-TimK

P.S. Another interesting comment on the Overlawyered thread, by “Dave”:

I own a preschool… A few years ago, I hired a young college girl working on an early childhood degree as an assistant teacher. We caught her going through the shelves of books in our storage room, and throwing out all all the pre-’85 books, because her professor had taught them they must be discarded. NOT because of physical properties, but because they tend to have Politically Incorrect stories and pictures in them of mothers wearing aprons and fathers smoking pipes, etc.

Oy vey!